Chapter 78: Barbecue, Once More

Chapter 78:
Barbecue, Once More

Western Cuisine Nekoya was closed for the Obon holiday.

Every year in August, the restaurant shut its doors for a full week.

This was partly due to the fact that Nekoya primarily served the area’s office workers. Since those workers were off work, there was little business during that period.

Nekoya was also an old restaurant. The previous master had believed that Obon and the New Year were times when one should rest. The current master felt the same way.

Still, Western Cuisine Nekoya had a tradition of serving a special dish before Obon started.

The price—twelve hundred yen—was a little higher than the typical one-thousand-yen lunch limit. However, the Obon feature was all-you-can-eat, so it was the sort of special menu option that Nekoya could only offer once a year during a festive time like this. Otherwise, the restaurant would have been firmly in the red (though customers would have walked away happy).

Long before the current master was born, there had been some kind of supply mistake, and the restaurant accidentally ordered more ingredients than it could handle. This was before Nekoya really had money, so the incident nearly caused the restaurant to close its doors. The master’s grandmother had been in charge of finances at the time. She’d apparently berated the previous master, who’d made the initial mistake. He’d laughed it off.

This had been just before Obon, back when the notion of taking the holidays off was more prevalent. Nekoya’s fridge was also much smaller back then. The restaurant got almost no customers during the holiday, which meant that they had no way of dealing with the overstocked food. The previous master had held his head in his hands in total despair.

After pulling his hair out all night trying to figure out how to get rid of the extra food, he came up with a plan and put out a sign.

Barbecue special today! Meat and vegetables are all-you-can-eat for the regular price!

The day the previous master unveiled this plan, the number of visitors to Nekoya surged. They somehow managed to sell out of all the extra food in two days flat. The restaurant barely made a profit, since the guests were after the cheap meat and shrimp, but the master was just happy not to have wasted the food.

The next year, customers came to him asking if he was planning another barbecue special, which forced him to repeat the event. He’d trapped himself.

Customers looked forward to the barbecue, even when the previous master raised its price to twelve hundred yen.

So, once a year, Western Cuisine Nekoya held a special two-day event. On the Friday just before Obon, and the Saturday after, the master offered barbecue to the inhabitants of both his world and the other.

***

This year, that Saturday morning had rolled around yet again. The master got himself pumped up.

“Time to grind.”

Friday had been a battlefield.

During the day, students on break had wandered in to eat all they could. At night, crowds of office workers made their way to the restaurant. The rush lasted from the second the master opened Nekoya’s doors to the moment he closed them.

The master, who was now six years into his thirties, hadn’t made it through that business unharmed. Truth be told, he really needed a break.

As far as he was concerned, however, he’d have a full week off starting the next day. When he thought of it that way, the barbecue was no sweat.

And so he cut the meat, washed the vegetables, and prepared the fish.

“Good morning, Master!”

“I’m actually tied up right now, so hop in the shower and grab a bite. Your sandwich is right over there. I’m done with Kuro’s curry, too.”

Although Aletta and Kuro had arrived, the master couldn’t afford to stop working.

There were fewer customers on Saturday compared to Friday, but there were also fewer staff. Things had gotten better since Aletta and Kuro had joined Nekoya as waitresses, but the master still had to handle the cooking on his own.

“All right. That should do it.”

Just as the master finished prepping, the sound of bells ringing signaled the arrival of customers and the beginning of the battle to end all battles.

***

Ellen’s smile deepened after she heard that the barbecue special was today. Her prediction was right on the mark.

“Oh! So, it is today, then!”

She met Herman’s eyes, and they smiled at one another. Her two children, Kai and Bona, also smiled.

Once a year, during the summer, barbecue was served on a Day of Satur.

Ellen had been a customer at the Restaurant to Another World for over ten years. After coincidentally visiting the restaurant on that specific Day of Satur multiple times, she was now able to predict when it would happen.

“Yeah, just like I thought. Well then, we’ll have four orders of barbecue. And…”

“Beer! I want beer!”

“Mom, I want cola!”

“Me toooooo!”

Excited about the special festival that only happened once a year, Herman and the kids called out their desired drinks.

Usually, Ellen would have immediately turned down these requests, but today was the annual barbecue. Just this once, she was more than happy to let the others indulge. Even she wanted to enjoy herself as much as possible.

“I know, I know.” She turned to the waitress. “Sorry about that. Can I get two beers and two colas, please?”

“No problem! Thank you very much.” Then the waitress asked Ellen and her family what food they preferred. “For the barbecue, you can pick what you want cooked. What would you like me to bring first?”

“Beef and pork. Oh, and chicken thighs, too. All with barbecue sauce, of course. Thanks,” Ellen replied with a smile.

This was what the special meant to Ellen and her family. Barbecue went hand in hand with delicious meat.

The relatively high price was a single silver coin per person. In exchange, however, you received refills of not just bread, rice, and soup, but even the main dish itself. Admission was worth it.

The draw was, in particular, the meat—an ingredient that wasn’t very accessible in the other world. The barbecue was a chance to eat as much of the Restaurant to Another World’s top-quality meat as you wanted. To Ellen and her family, it was basically a festival.

***

A little while later, the master brought a large plate out from the back. It held enough barbecue for four people.

“Sorry about the wait. Here’s your barbecue.”

Due to the sheer amount of food and drink, the waitress carried the drink tray.

“I have your drinks, too.”

They lined everything up on the table.

The rich aroma of cooked meat and slightly toasted barbecue sauce filled the air around Ellen’s family, making them all gulp in response. It was time to dig in.

The beef was loaded onto a skewer with oranie, while the pork occupied its own skewer. The chicken thighs were evenly cooked.

Ellen picked up the beef skewer, and the aroma of beef engulfed her. She could no longer restrain herself.

Wow…

The second she bit into the meat, juices, fat, and the barbecue sauce’s sweet and sour flavor exploded in her mouth.

The meat here never stops being delicious.

Ellen unconsciously narrowed her eyes.

This barbecue stuff was completely incredible. The sweet and sour sauce was flavorful, and the meat’s crisp surface hid the bits cooked to perfection within. The beef was particularly tender and lacked the scent of milk. Its juices poured into her mouth with each bite. It was so incredible that Ellen questioned whether the cows she knew were really the same animal.

How do you raise those beasts to end up this tasty? Geez.

To Ellen, beef was a food eaten during the Fall Fertility Festival.

The annual festival was held once the crops had been safely harvested. Every year at that time, the common folk offered their gratitude to the Lord of Earth and cooked beef.

They slaughtered old cows who couldn’t move and cows who could no longer produce milk, cooked them whole, and ate them.

Since Ellen and her family rarely had the opportunity to eat meat, the Fall Fertility Festival was a feast that everyone looked forward to. However, the reality was that the meat was a bit too tough for the elderly to chew, and it had a, let’s say, unique aroma. At the end of the day, that beef just wasn’t as good as pork raised specifically for food. Ellen and the others had come to this conclusion long ago.

However, the beef at the restaurant was completely different. It more than held its own against pork, lacking the stench of cow while also tickling the taste buds. Once you started eating Nekoya’s beef, you couldn’t stop until you were finished.

Crunchy, spicy, cooked oranie was skewered between the pieces of beef, cleansing the palate after each slice of meat. Before Ellen knew it, she’d finished an entire beef and oranie skewer and was reaching for her beer.

The refreshingly cold bitterness flowed down her throat, washing away the meat’s taste.

Ellen let out a satisfied sigh, looking at the other three, who were doing the same.

What’s this? I guess we’re pretty alike.

“Hey, Mom. You need to try this pork. It’s damn good. Here, here.”

After taking a breather, Herman picked up another pork skewer.

The barbecue pork was edged with white, translucent fat that looked as though it might drip off at any moment. Unlike the beef and oranie skewer, this skewer contained only cooked pork.

As soon as Ellen bit into the marbled meat, sweet juices spilled out. They fused with the barbecue sauce’s sweet and salty flavor, making the dish truly magnificent.

“Mom, the chicken thighs are super-duper delicious!”

“Try some! They really are!”

Normally, chicken thighs basted in barbecue sauce and cooked to perfection were sold as roasted chicken. Unlike the beef and pork, the chicken meat itself absorbed the barbecue sauce. On top of that, the skewer included the chicken’s crispy skin, tender thigh meat, and crunchy bits around the bone.

One experienced various textures when eating a chicken thigh, making it the children’s favorite meat dish.

“Yes, yes, give me a second. Let’s see. Ah… You kids should also try the beef. It’s wonderful. Completely different from the stuff at the fall festival.”

For Ellen and her family, barbecue meant indulging in as much meat as they could.

***

Elsewhere, two men indulged in the same meat in completely different ways. They were so far apart in age that they could have been father and son, and they had two dogs with them.

“So? What do ya think of this barbecue?”

“It’s crazy good. Wait… Can we seriously eat as much as we want for one silver coin?”

“Indeed we can,” the older man, Mashira, explained to his disciple, Yuuto. “Alcohol and soft drinks aren’t included, though. C’mon, let’s dig in. Meat and rice.”

Mashira was a seasoned hunter. He patted the heads of the two hunting dogs voraciously digging into their own unsalted cooked meat, wagging their tails back and forth.

“Yes, of course!”

Yuuto nodded intensely at his master. In his left hand was a skewer of meat, in his right a pair of chopsticks. He dug in immediately, removing the sweet, salty pork cooked with soy sauce and sugar from the skewer and placing it atop his rice.

Fat and juices dripped onto the sweet white rice.

As Yuuto expected, the flavors paired perfectly, making a dish that he felt he could eat forever.

“The rice here is just the best. I could live off this stuff!”

Mashira nodded in response to his disciple’s words. “Agreed. I honestly don’t know whether I come here for the meat or the rice anymore. Ha ha ha!”

Nekoya’s meat dishes were indeed incredible. The ginger pork, the square-simmered pork the older samurai had recommended, and the barbecue they were eating that day—Mashira felt that each and every dish was above and beyond the best that the Mountain Nation offered.

The white rice at the Restaurant to Another World, however, was even better. It was fundamentally different from the rice the Mountain Nation grew.

Since they were hunters, Yuuto and Mashira often had the opportunity to indulge in meat. So it made sense that they were so entranced by the restaurant’s rice.

Mashira inhaled the sweet steam coming off the rice, enjoying the aroma.

I’ll never get enough of this scent.

That aroma alone made him feel like, despite how much meat and rice he’d already eaten, he could still go for more. It was a mysterious sensation.

I ain’t about to lose to no youngster just yet. I can keep going!

Mashira grabbed his chopsticks, refusing to lag behind his disciple, who was putting away meat and rice at a furious speed.

***

Fardania, an elf on a journey, cut gently into her food with her fork and carried it to her mouth. It was delicious, as usual.

Curses… She grimaced. All he did was cook it. How can this meranza be so delicious?

With that thought running through her head, Fardania proceeded to eat her fifth meranza—eggplant in the other world—of the day.

Its green pulp was incredibly savory. The taste of the meranza itself merged with the flavors of the spicy grated ginger, the soy sauce it had absorbed, and the delicious shredded kombu sprinkled on top, making it the juiciest vegetable imaginable.

Its purple skin peeled away to reveal bright green insides. Meranza was a fat summer vegetable, and its rich pulp was tender. It was delicious in soup, since it absorbed the broth, and it could be salted and cooked as well.

However, salted meranza wouldn’t have been enough to get Fardania to order seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths.

Soy sauce is seriously cheating. If I had this stuff, I could make all sorts of delicious things.

Fardania glanced at her pupil, who was digging into a cob of sweet yellow corn.

Alice, the young elf child, was focused entirely on chewing the kernels on the fat cob. She’d apparently taken a liking to the vegetable.

When she bit into the freshly cooked, aromatic corn, it overflowed with sweet juice.

What made the corn even tastier, though, was the soy sauce’s salty flavor.

Its unique aroma and salinity combined elegantly with the corn’s sweetness, making the vegetable that much more appetizing and grabbing hold of Alice’s appetite.

“Excuse me, miss. Can I get another cob, please?”

Alice no longer ordered shiitake mashruums, sliced oranie, or cobbler’s tubers like she used to. She just kept ordering more corn.

This shredded kombu stuff is cheating, too.

Fardania used her fork to lift some of the shredded greens to eye level, as if examining them up close.

The master had explained that the kombu replaced another ingredient.

“I’d normally use bonito flakes on this, but I know you don’t like fishy-smelling stuff.”

To Fardania, the savory mass of the strange “kombu” tasted faintly of the sea.

I wonder if Camilla knows what this stuff is.

Taking in the scent of the ocean, Fardania glanced at the witch who lived in the seaside town. This very same witch had invited Fardania and Alice to the Restaurant to Another World that day.

Camilla sold all kinds of medicines to the town’s citizens. She called herself the Witch of the Sea so, as expected, she was knowledgeable about the ocean. Therefore, Fardania hoped she might get some answers from Camilla.

“Ah, yes. The kombu doesn’t appear to be freshly picked. Still, it seems as though he’s making sure to store it somewhere cold so that it doesn’t rot. It looks quite delicious, actually.”

Camilla was munching some seafood she’d ordered.

Round shripe, krakeen cut into large chunks, and scallops in their shells had been stabbed onto a skewer and cooked in soy sauce.

With each bite, the shripe pushed back satisfyingly against Camilla’s teeth. The chewy krakeen felt good to munch on. The scallops’ shells loosened in her mouth. Their mantles had a unique mouthfeel all their own.

Each piece was bathed in soy sauce, a liquid that closely resembled the fish sauce used by those who lived on the Western Continent’s shoreline. Wrapped in the sauce’s slightly cooked aroma, the skewer didn’t lose out to the seafood that Camilla took directly from the ocean floor. To her surprise, the shripe, krakeen, and scallops all seemed quite well preserved. There was no scarring or anything of the sort, and they had an aroma that made her want to keep eating.

“Hey, Camilla…”

As she enjoyed her food, she heard a voice call out to her.

“What is it, Fardania?”

Camilla stopped her fork and looked at Fardania, the long-eared descendent of elf invaders, who’d recently come to Camilla’s abode asking about fruit jelly.

Long, long ago, years before even Camilla herself was born, invaders had come from the continent north of the Lord of Blue.

They were barbarians who lumped the Ancient Six together with the enemy of all living things, the Million Colors of Chaos, calling them the Seven Overlords. Just one of the invader’s mages could take down a high priest or priestess with their incredible magic. The prideful creatures claimed the world was theirs, attacking the land of the Ancient Six’s children.

That was all in the past, however. Humanity now greatly outnumbered the invaders, so they lacked the overwhelming pride they’d once had and led quiet lives in small villages in the forest.

Since the Lord of Blue’s citizens lived in the ocean, they didn’t have much contact with the continent’s elven invaders. Thus, Camilla didn’t really hate elves. That was why she could accompany them as she was doing now.

“So, I’m assuming this stuff on the top is some kind of sea herb, but I would love some specifics.” said Fardania.

“Let me see… Don’t mind me. I’m just going to take a quick taste.”

Camilla directed her fork to the bright green vegetable that Fardania had been devouring fervently up until that moment.

“Mmm… Yes, this is probably an herb.”

Fardania made sure to keep her ears wide open to avoid missing Camilla’s explanation of what, exactly, the green herb was.

***

Night came, and after seeing off the last customer of the evening, the master sat down.

Tired words left his lips. “It’s finally over…”

The master felt as though this annual barbecue only got harder with every year. It was an unfortunate reminder that he wasn’t getting any younger.

The day had been incredibly busy. The customers who came to Nekoya in the evening, usually in search of a drink, immediately ordered plate after plate of barbecue after hearing what day it was. Even the last customer, a demon woman who always ordered beef stew, asked for “just a taste.” She’d then proceeded to eat the remaining barbecue—enough for five people.

“But I can really take it easy tomorrow, at least.”

The master had gotten through the hard part. Starting tomorrow, he’d be able to relax all the way through the following Saturday.

As he started preparing the barbecue he’d set aside for himself and his waitresses, the master thought, What should I do this year?